


A Goodnight Story

by zielenna



Series: Leftovers [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, First War with Voldemort, Immigration & Emigration, Soviet Union
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 11:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4519965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zielenna/pseuds/zielenna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A woman tells a story of her life. Well, not all of it. Not even her favourite part. But she tells it from the beginning to the fairy-tale ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Goodnight Story

**Author's Note:**

> Another bit from never-written "Life and Times of Audrey Weasley". Doesn't need to be read with "Glass Mask", but if it is, you will (at some point) recognize the narrator.

I was born in 1954. Stalin had been dead for a year. Europe was torn in two and the half into which I came, as I heard, kicking and screaming, was still considered the ill-fated one. My life there was bleak. Nothing happened to me. I suppose it was the feature of the system we lived in. A regime, my parents called it. Engineered by the muggles and supported by the wizards. Not all of them, my father said. Enough, said my mother, enough to make it work. Those wizards had ears and eyes that reached further than those of the muggles. Those wizards abused magic.

My mother often reminded me of this. She told me I was no better for having a wand. Merely more comfortable. It might have been making me worse. She also told me there was too much magic in the world. She often cried. My father would have none of it. Stop messing with the poor kid’s head, he would say. If you feel so guilty, why don’t you go to Petrin and find a tree to pin yourself to. There is plenty to go around… Petrin is a hill in Prague. There are parks there. We could go there, if you wish.

What I remember well is year 1968. Prague Spring. You should have had it covered in your school – it is world history, no less. I knew it then. We all knew it. We were witnesses to history. My mother was ecstatic. All Czech were. There were celebrations. There were girls marching with flags and boys riding their motorcycles. There were muggle camera-men. One took a photo of me. I was flattered. He was French and didn’t look like Czech men and he chose me to be ‘A Czech Girl’ he would publish in a western magazine. The world, the outside world, they adored the photos from here. Us, wizards, met together and wished for a soon and happy ending. We believed it was near. I remember gatherings in our little flat. Old bottles, treasured for years, were opened. A mistake. We should have saved them for later.

Later, you see, the Prague Spring was over. Our president – well, the muggle one, but he was ours more than the facetious Minister of Magic, that one was only after his own business – our president was stolen. The Soviets had him. When he returned, we heard him on the radio. He couldn’t catch his breath. He was pathetic. My father said so. He said he was sick of it. Sick of the president and sick of the country. He said the country was sick. The country was a ruin. When he said all these things, I didn’t think them true. Prague, the only city I had seen then, was beautiful. There were no ruins there. My mother was upset about it. Wounds you didn’t see weren’t real enough for her and so she had to damage her own little Czech body. Now I remember it, I understand what my father meant.

He said we should have run. We weren’t wizards for nothing, were we, said he. There was nothing to wait for. My mother protested. She wouldn’t come. Our country couldn’t be left alone. If we had run, who would be there to care for it? My father, as we would say, had our country in his ass. Don’t think I condemn him for it – if I were older, I would say the same thing. My mother, she wasn’t a fighter. She made us swear to write her letters and that was it. I wish she fought harder. My father did, too. He shouted at her. You will die here, Tereza, he said. This country is a tomb. Do you hear me? A fucking tomb. Sorry, it was what he said. For one, my mother didn’t cry. She was tranquil, do you imagine? She was smiling and didn’t mind the blood. There was blood. With my father – I see you understand. Well. When she kissed my forehead, there was a wet mark left. Is it here, still?

My father and I had our first stop in Switzerland where many other Czech had ran to before. We bought maps and made quick friends. There were evenings of merry talking and drinking and pointing cities with old names. My father said we could go to Paris and see their museums. To Rome, to see their temples. To a Greek island. At nights, he listened to an old gramophone he took from home and stared at the wall. He had no work. I wrote to my mother regularly, but I made no mention of those things. The replies I received from her always made me feel down. She wrote an oath for me to make. I were to swear I would never forget my country and my people. I would carry their weakness and misfortune in my heart. I would tell the others and never allow them to forget. It was a heavy ordeal for a teenage girl to carry out. I layed sleepless, repeating over what my mother had said and wondering about my father and his money. There couldn’t be much more left, I reasoned. Soon we would have to choose where we were going. And where we were not.

 

In the end, we went to England. To the green and pleasant land… But I hadn’t had read this poem yet when we came there. Their language was the only my father knew. So, you see, there was never much of a choice. Only postponing of it. To say my father knew English was an exaggeration. He knew the look of it, the literature written with it. He had no idea how the words should be pronounced and so we spent the first weeks being discreetly smiled upon and advised to try elsewhere. Children were more sincere and laughed out loud when I spoke. They asked me if I was a gypsy, because I had such dark hair and dark eyes and strange voice. They told me to read the future out of their hands and they told me not to steal their money. I wasn’t a gypsy, but I did both future-reading and stealing. Both are easier if you are a witch.

At last, my father and I had to move from London, which was crowded and smelly and larger than anything I had ever seen – it does take time to get used to it, you wouldn’t know… Well, we moved to another city and from a city to a town and from a town to a village.  And there at last we found a place to stay. It was a pub: some dirty old place managed by an irritable old man, who nevertheless offered my father a job and a place to stay for us two. I was to help at the pub. The village was near to the great English school of magic and so I often saw the students around. However, they rarely entered the pub and I had to look at them through the window. The school was called Hogwarts. For some reason, the old man leading the pub had a quarrel with its Headmaster. I still don’t know why. My father agreed with all remarks the old man had to make: the Dumbledore man, he had abandoned them when Europe had been burning. All he had had were pretty words and a long beard and for this they had given him medals. Waste of metal, my father said. The old man poured him another drink. I, of course, mentioned nothing of it in the letters to my mother. Her replies grew rarer. I worried the same, or less. Distance does it to you.

My tasks at the pub were minor. I didn’t pay attention to them and the old man was often angry with for this. Why, I wasn’t staying in a hotel, he said and called me a mademoiselle in mocking tone, what infuriated me. _Biezh do haaye_ , I replied. Go to hell, in Czech. Don’t repeat it. Me, I just got back. The old man muttered under his beard and left me alone. Once, he didn't leave. He asked me, I believe, if I wanted to work there at all. There was no mademoiselle attached and so I chose to answer truthfully. No. Then he asked if I was a real witch, a damn strong witch. Oh, I bit my lips not to laugh. Was I, indeed. And, he asked, if I was a hard-working one, and you could see it was bothering him. I said I would be if put to a task different than managing a bar. Well, the old man said. No, it wasn’t exactly what he said. I am not repeating what he said. The gist of it was I would have to pay him afterwards, because I owed him and my debt was going to be huge. All of it was for my father, he called him, your poor fellow of a father, because I myself was an, well, an ungrateful brat with foul mouth, more or less. And couldn’t I bloody, don’t repeat it, bloody see how dirty the table I had been cleaning still was.

Next year, I was a Hogwarts student. I don’t know how the old man did it. What, a brother of Headmaster? Where have you read it? Heard it, then. Rita Skeeter claims so? Silly girl, why would you believe her? Skeeter is a gossip and nothing more. Well, where was I. At Hogwarts, yes. Thank you. I did mention it to my mother. She replied with repeating the oaths she wanted me to make. She asked how I was able to swallow bites of those rich meals I had written about, knowing Czech were starving, and not only for food, but for freedom also. Her letters, I thought, were growing bitter. Insufferable, I thought. No, I did not. I learned the word later. But I did ask myself if I had no right to be happy. And I did not ask my mother.

Hogwarts was strange and a first school I had attended then. In Czech? I was taught at home, because education was controlled by the regime, my parents said. So was the wizarding education. Oh, I heard something of those schools when we were in Switzerland. Runaway students said they were all taught field magic, agricultural magic. How to grow things. Some went to technological schools and there they learned how to control metals with their magic. This branch was still, ah, rather experimental, and there were many accidents. No, no Divination or Astrology – those were considered bourgeois. And you can imagine how did History of Magic look like. Well. I was put in the fourth year at Hogwarts, even though at the time I could have be a sixth. My knowledge, they said, was incomplete and disorganized and it needed systematizing before expanding. The children – all of them were children, no matter how old, I thought. With their clean faces and smooth hands and bright eyes. They made sensation out of me. For a while. They wanted to know the story. What story, I asked. Oh, there must have been a story, they said, a reason for her being here. Do tell, they said. I was born in 1954, I said. Stalin had been dead for a year. And so I told, half what my mother made me swear to tell and half what the children around her wanted to hear. Proportions have changed over time. I added spies, explosives, torturers. I made up a kidnapping of myself. However, the demand began to drop and then, no one cared any more. Others could tell my story as well as I did. Do you see her?, was the beginning. The dark one, there. She is Zenia and she is invaded by the Soviet Union. It was a certain short-cut which made the story easier to tell if you had only ten minutes of the break-time. I felt as a country in a body. My mother, I thought, would have been proud. Somehow, it didn’t make it better.

It took a mere month, the process of turning my person into a flag. A short time for me to learn all secrets of Hogwarts and, given my situation, it is no surprise I learnt none. Afterwards, I didn’t bother. People annoyed me and I needed my grades to be the best. Was I a Ravenclaw? Oh no, dear. Do you know me so little? I was a Slytherin. Daddy – no, daddy was a Hufflepuff. Year above me. We didn’t meet at the school. Or we did. There could be excuse mes in the crowd. Leaves flying from shoulder to shoulder. Doorknobs touched by me and then by him. Such  things. No, I didn’t have a boyfriend. No, not many friends. It was me and my excessive ambition, as my father learned to call it. What I was going to say was that due to my somewhat reclusive nature, I had little idea of what was going on, socially, politically. I was vaguely aware of a conflict between Slytherin and Gryffindor, but the nature and consequences of this antagonism escaped me. My goal was to go through Hogwarts and then disappear, leave my Czech-ness behind, become free in some total manner. I too was starving, but my mother did not see it. I was buried under old parchment and I didn’t notice things. Ridiculous, if you look at it, because I shared a common room with the future Death Eaters. There were too many normal people for me to notice them, I suppose. But I was asked if I were a pureblood. Usually, I said I didn’t know, because I was busy with some essay or another. I don’t care, I said once, translating some runes. My translation made no sense. There was silence after I replied and then she, I can’t remember the name, asked me how could I not care. Well, soon afterwards I learned I couldn’t. When I returned to the pub in the village on the weekends, my father and the old man sat together listening to the radio. There were people gone and their bodies found. Mutilated, a new word for me. I can’t see it again, my father said. I can’t live through it again. But where will I go to, I am too weak now. I can’t, I can’t go anywhere. I must stay here and see it happen again. God, I can’t. Yes, now I saw there were two old men at the table.

It was 1974 and a first rumble of the war when I graduated from Hogwarts. Top of my year, I was. Yes, like your sister. And you are going to be top of your year, too. In better times, I hope. Well, I was satisfied enough. I fancied myself to be free to do anything I pleased. It was not true as what I did was to ran. To United States, because the only direction I knew was West. My mother died the winter before, there was a note from the hospital, and I could only imagine her scolding. My father told me it was a smart move and it were smart moves which made people alive. The old man – Aberforth, I felt I got to call him by his name since I was an adult now – said he wouldn’t miss me, but wished me good luck all the same. We were all needing some, these days. His bones hurt. How soon, I asked on the threshold. Like you care, he told me. _Biezh do haaye_ , he told me. My father taught him Czech. Go to hell. I believed I was doing just the opposite.

 

After years spent in a soviet republic and then in dingy flats full of whining emigrants, and then in a crumbling castle in a middle of goddamn nowhere, America was – well. Intoxicating, I would say. Land of freedom, land of dreams. They had lava lamps. Their cities were so large. You know, us Europeans, we are bundled all together, plied on our backs. If you go to any capital in Western Europe, somewhere with a scent of Dark Ages to it, you will feel like choking: the streets are so narrow and the buildings are so high. The sky is far. In an American city, you can take a full breath. Their cities sprawl and sprawl and never end. Then, there are deserts. Spaces so vast and empty like cosmos, where you find only scattered gas stations and motels and diners. When you ride at night, the flickering neons seem a mirage. A mirage was what America appeared to me, young and desperate, in the turning point of the seventies. A phantasmagoria. The music of the times only intensified the impression.

There were wizards there and I met some of them. Problem was, they wanted a story, too. I was an English woman now, however strange my accent remained, and they all knew there was some misfortune in that. How was the state of the affairs, they asked me. What did the government do. Had I seen a dead body, by any chance? I felt sick. I didn’t want to be another country’s mouthpiece. You can imagine me as a trapped animal: prone to impulses. Well, I made some preparations – I was smart, as my father said. But the degree to which I longed for freedom was not rational, I suppose. So, I found people who knew how to transfigure sheets of paper into identity cards, diplomas and car licenses. It wasn’t entirely legal. But, you see, if you learn something in a soviet republic, it is to ignore the rules if they make no sense. So I got my papers, a new identity. I kept my name, but I changed my surname to an English one. I wouldn’t like anyone to find me and to tell me to come back. What was I called? Sawyer. I exchanged money my father gave me for dollars and the rate was good, so I was in a comfortable position to start something.

I rented a flat and I enrolled for a course for secretaries. It was what my land-lady suggested me. With my abilities, I could be much more in the wizarding world, but at the time it seemed to me a fair exchange: laughable position for being myself and not a story. Getting a job wasn’t a problem, because I was young and fairly attractive. I got to work at a successful law firm. It was known that the men I was making coffee for were able to defend any client. I was supposed to be impressed. I had not much of an idea what to do with myself. I earned money and I spent them on clothing or cosmetics, like any other girl who lived in my building. I made some friends. We borrowed cheap romances from each other. I still have some in the back of my book-case – if you ever feel like wasting an hour or two, they are yours. If it were a different century, I would call my state a one of ennui. But I didn’t mind. You see, I figured it must had been the waiting part, the last waiting part, before my life finally took a turn it had always been supposed to take. I got out of Czech, I got out of England, I crossed the great water. Now it was the time for my fairy-tale ending. For a real happiness to begin. It was a reoccurring topic in my conversations with those other girls and it was them who taught me happiness began with a husband. A guy, usually, but a one who would turn into a husband when the time would be. I didn’t know any better. When I wondered what my mother would have teach me if she had been given the time, I thought she would teach me nothing, because she disapproved of happiness in general. I didn’t wish to be like her.  So I waited for my guy.

His name was Rich. Short for Richard, I supposed, but you never knew with the Americans. It could have been just Rich. He was one of the successful men I was making coffee for. The youngest one. If my idea of America was to be embodied in a single male, it would have been him. He looked like a movie star. The manner in which he took a lighter out of his pocket was picturesque. You could imagine him serving drinks on his yacht or making a conversation with a Senator. He spoke like an Ivy League scholar. When he said my name, it felt like having a heart attack. For no apparent reason, I was promoted to be his assistant. You know how it goes. We were young. His job was stressful. I was around during late office nights. It was August when it happened, a sultry night full of burning wind and police cars riding on signal, a night Chandler would write about. I made Rich coffee with ice, because a girl who was the new secretary went home two hours earlier. He didn’t thank me, but when he emptied the cup, he dried his mouth with a paper napkin and kissed me. It was chaste and bitter. My first kiss. And then some more. You can go home now, Rich said afterwards. I cried in a street-car. An old lady asked me what was the matter and I told her to go to hell, in English and mimicking Rich’s accent. You see, I was terrified of becoming her, of never getting my fairy-tale ending.

In that street-car, I made up my mind: I was going to have Rich and I was going to have a life with him. A proper American life. A fulfilled American dream. I bought a new lipstick and a pair of leather heels. I intended to make myself look like a man-killer or a man-eater, because if I ate Rich up, I had a chance to be him. Something fascinating and dangerous, and irresistible, anyway. Well, what should I say. It worked. I suppose me being a witch had something to do with it. I never cast a spell on Rich, no. But muggles, they have a sense of otherness when they deal with one of us. We are different. I hear it is due to the chemicals we emit, hormones or such. My magic made me appear mysterious to Rich. He had already had me, but he half-consciously realized it wasn’t all of me that he knew. I was a trick, a riddle. And Rich, you have to understand, he was obsessed with himself. In his eyes, he was the most complex human being and therefore superior to all others who were simple organisms you could observe and analyse and use. Me, he didn’t see so clearly. He kept asking me for a secret. Was I a gypsy? Was I a Russian? Was I a spy? There was some truth in all those suggestions. I told him I was merely Czech. He didn’t know where Czech Republic was. I was an enigma. Eastern European enigma, something wild and dark about me. What he felt towards me was ancient: it was the sensation of a crusader finding infidel’s harem-girl or of a missionary meeting a priestess of a pagan tribe. I am not sure if I should tell you this, but if I have to tell it all, all it is. When Rich and I were together, he would hurt me. It was nothing strange: he was a rough guy and I was his girl. But I knew he was violent, because he was an American and I was not. I was of the world unknown to him, and doubly so. His method was that of Alexander the Great: he solved Gordian mysteries with weapons, then he conquered.

We were in love. No, we weren’t. It didn’t matter: he was my fairy-tale ending. We married before Christmas.

**Author's Note:**

> Anything related to Czech Republic is borrowed from Milan Kundera's "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". If I nevertheless made any errors there, please tell me. Zenia is inspired by Roz and Zenia of Margaret Atwood's "The Robber Bride". So is Rich (there, Mitch). The chunk on their office romance is inspired by Edward Hopper's "Office at Night". The two sentences on possibility of Zenia meeting "Daddy" in Hogwarts are lifted from Wisława Szymborska's poem, "Love at first sight".
> 
> Disclaimer (sort of): I'm still figuring out what I think on the topics touched, so although it is definite as the content of the fic, outside of it, it remains raw - as in: unmade, so to speak.


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